DialPad.Com

Steve · Post by **Steve** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 12:15 am

I've been playing with a free Internet phone service called DialPad. Just talked to my inlaws in New Mexico for 35 minutes using DialPad and the quality was acceptable. Still not telephone quality mostly because of an echo of your own voice, but hey, what do you expect for free!

DialPad allows you to call computer to phone or computer to computer. I think that it is limited to the continental U.S. (at least the free service has that constraint). Other than a rather intrusive registering questionnaire, I haven't had many problems with the service.

Has anyone else used DialPad?

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 12:28 am

Yeah Tony-San turned me on to Dial pad a few months ago

Killer! Most of my calls are instate and as we all know that's the most $$$ call to make. When they get the international going it will kick much A$$!
I hate seeing the bills from Europe

Oh yeah Cable Modem Sounds like a corded phone! 56k Modems are cellphone quality but still like you said the price is right!
Chuck

Post by **gmattson** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 12:30 am

I played with it for a couple weeks. OK for long distance calls to close friends and relatives. (My dad thinks it amazing that the call costs 'zip'!)

But the quality varys a great deal from call to call. Not acceptable if the call is important or business related.

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GEM

Scott Danziger · Post by **Scott Danziger** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 1:59 am

I'm wondering how private these calls are too. My brother is using something similar. Net2phone I think. He likes it. The closest I have come was to use netmeeting once with Tony. Haven't tried to a phone yet.

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 5:52 am

It's as safe as any non-encrypted data going across the net.
I'd NEVER use it for business or "confidential" matters "V.O.I.P." is the wave right now. I think I saw an article where AT&T was going to get in the game and offer free net-2-phone type service. There is service where you can call an 800 number and surf the net! I bet thats fun since 98% of the sites on the net misuse and don't fully understand the "ALT" tag.

Chuck

Post by **gmattson** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 10:01 am

Chuck:
I didn't understand the last part of your post. . . <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote

There is service where you can call an 800 number and surf the net! I bet thats fun since 98% of the sites on the net misuse and don't fully understand the "ALT" tag.

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GEM

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 1:24 pm

Mattson-san,
I can't find the article about the service I talked about in the earlier post. Basicly what it allows is you to call an 800 number and surf the `net. To do this they use a text to speach converter. It's the same way blind people surf the `net.
The browser reads what is on the screen. Problem is as you know most `net sites today are HEAVY in graphics and skinny on text for navigation of a site. Therefor once i hit the front page i'm stuck.
Now proper use of the "ALT" tag would prevent this. The "ALT" tag is used in conjunction with the image tag, allowing you to describe the the image or add some text to it. i.e. I've a picture of a red truck on the screen. I'd use the alt="This is a picture of a red truck" to describe it. When you move your mouse over the picture this caption pops up for a sec or two.
Here is an example:

Now when you move your mouse over that you should see "This is the Avid Microchip logo" pop up....."
If a text reader hits that the user knows that he can select that link and learn more about Avid.
Most sites would have the logo there and maybe some text saying "click here to learn more about "Avid" now where is "here" when you can't see it and have no idea of what image it was talking about?
I hope this explained it somewhat better.

Chuck

Post by **gmattson** » Sat Apr 15, 2000 1:36 pm

Yes it does Chuck. Thanks.

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GEM